Widows 7 64 bit

[Dennis]

I bought 12 GB of memory when I bought my computer and then found out
it doesn't use that much because it is the 32 bit version and not 64
bit. Is there an upgrade or do I have to buy a complete new OS to
have Windows 7 64 bit?

 

[Wolf K]

I bought 12 GB of memory when I bought my computer and then found out
it doesn't use that much because it is the 32 bit version and not 64
bit. Is there an upgrade or do I have to buy a complete new OS to
have Windows 7 64 bit?

Search on "Windows 7 anytime upgrade"

Wolf K.

 

[Dennis]

Search on "Windows 7 anytime upgrade"

Wolf K.

i forgot to include that it is a Windows 7 Professional OEM disk.
The disk says "Includes Windows Anytime Upgrade".

 

[Ken Blake]

I bought 12 GB of memory when I bought my computer and then found out
it doesn't use that much because it is the 32 bit version and not 64
bit. Is there an upgrade or do I have to buy a complete new OS to
have Windows 7 64 bit?

See other replies, but bear in mind that, regardless of whether or not
it's called an "upgrade," you can not change from one "bitness" of
Windows to another (32-bit to 64-bit, or vice versa) by doing an
upgrade. The only way to get to 64-bit is by doing a clean
installation.

Also bear in mind that to run 64-bit Windows, you have to have a
64-bit motherboard and CPU. If your computer is reasonably new, it's
probably 64-bit, but you should make sure before you do anything.

 

[Paul]

I bought 12 GB of memory when I bought my computer and then found out
it doesn't use that much because it is the 32 bit version and not 64
bit. Is there an upgrade or do I have to buy a complete new OS to
have Windows 7 64 bit?

Make an 8GB RAMDisk for yourself ?

This is free, up to a 4GB RAMdisk size. You can experiment with it first
and see if it's worth paying more to have the capacity limit removed.

http://memory.dataram.com/products-and-services/software/ramdisk

You can run HDTune and benchmark it. My machine has slow RAM, and you
should be able to do better than this.

http://img196.imageshack.us/img196/8694/hdtunedataram2gbabove.gif

Paul

 

[Yousuf Khan]

I bought 12 GB of memory when I bought my computer and then found out
it doesn't use that much because it is the 32 bit version and not 64
bit. Is there an upgrade or do I have to buy a complete new OS to
have Windows 7 64 bit?

You can use the same activation key between the 32- and 64-bit versions
of the same edition of Windows 7. So if you have Windows 7 Professional
32-bit, then you can use Professional 64-bit too.

However, there is no way of saving your setup between 32-bit and 64-bit.
If you want the 64-bit, then it will be like a fresh install. You'd have
to backup your data on that drive to something else. And you'll have to
reinstall all of your applications.

Yousuf Khan

 

[R. C. White]

Hi, Dennis.

There's hardware - and there's software.

By that, I mean that all (I think) computers sold today have 64-bit innards
and will support many more GB of RAM than you or I might need in the next
several years! (16 GB in Home Premium, 192 GB in Professional and higher,
per Windows Inside Out)

But many 64-bit computers are sold with 32-bit Windows installed. With a
32-bit operating system, we can access only 4 GB of that RAM, no matter how
much is physically installed. And some amount of that 4 GB is reserved for
system use, so only about 3.5 GB (varies with your configuration) of your 12
GB is actually available to you.

So your solution, as you've learned, is to switch to 64-bit Win7. How you
make the switch is up to you, but an "upgrade" from 32-bit to 64-bit is NOT
one of the options. As the others have said, you'll need to boot the
hardware into 64-bit mode (usually by booting from the 64-bit DVD); you
can't boot into 32-bit Windows and run 64-bit Setup from there. WET
(Windows Easy Transfer - included on your disk) will make the job easier.

If your computer came with ONLY 32-bit Windows pre-installed, then you'll
need to get the 64-bit DVD. But if you bought the retail Win7 Ultimate (for
example), you should find TWO DVDs in the package, with a single Product Key
that will install either of them - as often as you might need to re-install.

You might want to check out this page:
http://windows.microsoft.com/en-us/windows7/32-bit-and-64-bit-Windows-frequently-asked-questions

Once you get 64-bit Win7 installed, you can go buy - and use - a lot more
RAM. ;^}

RC
--
R. C. White, CPA
San Marcos, TX
(e-mail address removed)
Microsoft Windows MVP (2002-2010)
Windows Live Mail 2011 (Build 15.4.3555.0308) in Win7 Ultimate x64 SP1


"Dennis" wrote in message

I bought 12 GB of memory when I bought my computer and then found out
it doesn't use that much because it is the 32 bit version and not 64
bit. Is there an upgrade or do I have to buy a complete new OS to
have Windows 7 64 bit?

 

[Jeff Layman]

I bought 12 GB of memory when I bought my computer and then found out
it doesn't use that much because it is the 32 bit version and not 64
bit. Is there an upgrade or do I have to buy a complete new OS to
have Windows 7 64 bit?

Before you do, check that anything you currently use which has a 32-bit
driver has a 64-bit driver available.

 

[charlie]

Before you do, check that anything you currently use which has a 32-bit
driver has a 64-bit driver available.

Depending on how much trouble you want to go to, and so forth, there is
a way to remove the 4G limit. It's NOT MS approved. I'm still
a bit miffed about MS's failure to disclose things properly in the
beginning.
http://www.geoffchappell.com/notes/windows/license/memory.htm
Is a place to start the process, if you are still interested after
finding out all the whereas-es.

 

[dweebken]

There's hardware - and there's software.

Sure is. and then there's hardware and there's hardware. I have a
new-ish laptop from Toshiba with Win 7 64 bit running happily. I wanted
to add more memory but the MAX the hardware can take is 8 GB. So I've
maxed it out. Also changed the spindle drive with an SSD and it really
flies heaps and heaps faster.

 

[BeeJ]

Have you worked with this RAMDisk much?
Reliable?
Fast?
Comments please.

--
So where are we?
Not the street address.
Not the city.
Not the country.
Not the Earth.
Not the Solar System.
Not the Galaxy.
Not the Universe.
Not the Brane.
So where is the Brane?
Where are we?

Life is but a dream!

 

[Paul]

Have you worked with this RAMDisk much?
Reliable?
Fast?
Comments please.

Yes, it's fast.

Reliable ? It's as reliable as the RAM is.
If your RAM makes errors already, then the files
on the RAMDisk will get errors too.

I even placed the pagefile on it, but it
isn't really good enough (bug free enough)
for that usage. I saw two tiny issues, in a
four day test interval.

But if you need a small and very fast place
to store things, it's good for that.

And the reason I mentioned it in this place,
is if a person owns 12GB of RAM, and the
OS can't use more than 4GB of it, then being
able to use 8GB as a RAMDisk, allows you to get
usage from a thing you wouldn't otherwise
be able to access. If the OS stops at 4GB,
normally you wouldn't be able to get to the
other 8GB area. But with the RAMDisk software,
you can use that other 8GB area. It's because
the RAMDisk software runs as a driver, that
it gains access to that area.

Paul

 

[Jeff Layman]

Depending on how much trouble you want to go to, and so forth, there is
a way to remove the 4G limit. It's NOT MS approved. I'm still
a bit miffed about MS's failure to disclose things properly in the
beginning.
http://www.geoffchappell.com/notes/windows/license/memory.htm
Is a place to start the process, if you are still interested after
finding out all the whereas-es.

That is an interesting article, and I only wish I were able to
understand it! However, from what I can see, there may be situations
(eg physical memory address) where 32-bit drivers will not work is more
than 4GB ram installed.

As I am not technically minded, is it possible to explain why, if there
are 4GB or less memory installed in a 64-bit system, 32-bit drivers do
not work in that situation?

 

[Andy Burns]

As I am not technically minded, is it possible to explain why, if there
are 4GB or less memory installed in a 64-bit system, 32-bit drivers do
not work in that situation?

The memory probably isn't mapped as one linear chunk from addresses 0 to
2^32

There'll be 640kB starting at address 0, followed by chunks of I/O
space, VGA memory an BIOS ROMs

That alone means the memory finishes at 2^32 + 384kB so some addresses
don't fit into 32bits

In practice there are likely to be bigger holes for 256MB or more of
AGP/PCI configuration space, even if none are fitted.

 

[Paul]

That is an interesting article, and I only wish I were able to
understand it! However, from what I can see, there may be situations
(eg physical memory address) where 32-bit drivers will not work is more
than 4GB ram installed.

As I am not technically minded, is it possible to explain why, if there
are 4GB or less memory installed in a 64-bit system, 32-bit drivers do
not work in that situation?

A 32 bit driver, can use "bounce buffers" as a design method.

And some platforms support an "IOMMU", such that even the I/O system
has virtual to physical mapping, such that the bus hardware generates
32 bit addresses, and the IOMMU translates them to 64 bit locations
(i.e. high memory).

Those are ways of solving some of those kinds of issues.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOMMU

"For example, as of 2010[update] x86 computers can use more than 4 GiB
of memory, enabled by the PAE feature in an x86 processor. Still, an
ordinary 32-bit PCI device simply cannot address the memory above
the 4 GiB boundary, and thus it cannot perform DMA to it. Without an
IOMMU, the operating system would have to implement time-consuming
bounce buffers (FreeBSD/Linux) also known as double buffers[7]
(Windows nomenclature)."

PCI cards come in two types. A card that generates single cycle 32 bit
addresses. But there are also cards that generate double cycle addresses,
and a modern Southbridge may recognize a double cycle address, and
do the right thing (like reach up into high memory with it). Such cards
probably aren't all that common - maybe some PCI RAID cards or something.
There are probably more examples of single cycle capable PCI chips
(like maybe older NIC chips), then the double-cycle capable type.

Paul

 

[The Seabat]

Are you saying that if I have a copy of Windows 7 32-bit installed on
a 'puter and I borrow a copy of Windows 7 64-bit from a friend, I can
then clean install his copy of the 64-bit version and use my original
product key from the 32-bit version to install it?? That would be sooo
cool!

 

[Yousuf Khan]

Are you saying that if I have a copy of Windows 7 32-bit installed on
a 'puter and I borrow a copy of Windows 7 64-bit from a friend, I can
then clean install his copy of the 64-bit version and use my original
product key from the 32-bit version to install it?? That would be sooo
cool!

Yup, that's exactly what I'm saying. But it has to be one of the retail
copies of Windows 7 with an activation key.

Yousuf Khan

 

[Loony]

That is an interesting article, and I only wish I were able to
understand it! However, from what I can see, there may be situations
(eg physical memory address) where 32-bit drivers will not work is more
than 4GB ram installed.

As I am not technically minded, is it possible to explain why, if there
are 4GB or less memory installed in a 64-bit system, 32-bit drivers do
not work in that situation?

A 32 bit driver, can use "bounce buffers" as a design method.

And some platforms support an "IOMMU", such that even the I/O system
has virtual to physical mapping, such that the bus hardware generates
32 bit addresses, and the IOMMU translates them to 64 bit locations
(i.e. high memory).

Those are ways of solving some of those kinds of issues.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/IOMMU

"For example, as of 2010[update] x86 computers can use more than 4 GiB
of memory, enabled by the PAE feature in an x86 processor. Still, an
ordinary 32-bit PCI device simply cannot address the memory above
the 4 GiB boundary, and thus it cannot perform DMA to it. Without an
IOMMU, the operating system would have to implement time-consuming
bounce buffers (FreeBSD/Linux) also known as double buffers[7]
(Windows nomenclature)."

PCI cards come in two types. A card that generates single cycle 32 bit
addresses. But there are also cards that generate double cycle addresses,
and a modern Southbridge may recognize a double cycle address, and
do the right thing (like reach up into high memory with it). Such cards
probably aren't all that common - maybe some PCI RAID cards or something.
There are probably more examples of single cycle capable PCI chips
(like maybe older NIC chips), then the double-cycle capable type.

Paul

Hello Paul,

If you please, this is a bit off the above post, and it concerns where I
could deposit URLs for NewsGroupPosters to look at. You gave me a URL a
few months back.

Thanks again for all your help

Looney ;-)

 

[Paul]

Hello Paul,

If you please, this is a bit off the above post, and it concerns where I
could deposit URLs for NewsGroupPosters to look at. You gave me a URL a
few months back.

Thanks again for all your help

Looney ;-)

You means posting pictures ?

You can use imageshack.us .

http://imageshack.us/?no_multi=1

Set image size to "Do Not Resize". Use the "Browse" to
identify the file to upload, then "Upload Now".

Paul

 

[Dominique]

I bought 12 GB of memory when I bought my computer and then found out
it doesn't use that much because it is the 32 bit version and not 64
bit. Is there an upgrade or do I have to buy a complete new OS to
have Windows 7 64 bit?

What brand of computer is it and where have you bought it?

It looks like the reseller is in fault here since you bought the memory at
the same time than the computer. He should have told you to choose the 64
bits version of Windows; if I were you I would try to negociate that with
your reseller.

You will have to backup your data (documents, photos, music, emails, etc.)
reformat and do a clean install but it's worth it.

You'll also need 64 bits drivers for your hardware if they're not included
in Windows.